Wednesday, March 18, 2009

The international excavations at Mons Claudianus (1987-1993) in the Eastern Desert with the collaboration of the IFAO produced over 9000, mostly Greek, ostraca. This fourth volume in the series contains texts that are directly concerned with the technicalities and the daily administration of the quarrying. All texts are from the second century of our era. There are lists of distribution of workers to individual quarries, letters and requisitions concerning tools, texts concerning the forges and the maintenance of tools. There is a series of drafts of letters to the procurator Caesaris concerning finished works, and a number of more private letters illustrating the life in the quarries.At the end there are three appendices: a dictionary of termini technici, many of which are new, one concerning the number of people working in the quarries, and one concerning the transportation of the stone down to the Nile.With few exceptions all the ostraca are illustrated.The book illustrates work in the quarries as seen through the written documents, where D.P.S. Peacock, V.A. Maxfield Mons Claudianus, Survey and excavations I. Topography and Quarries have already told the story from an archaeological point of view.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Papyrus sale (more info)

As you may remember, the Board of Trustees at the United Theological Seminary (www.united.edu) is exploring the sale of its papyrus collection, most of which (8 of 9) are from the well documented Oxyrhynchus excavation. We recently sent you a summary on this collection. You can download the Offer Letter Instructions at the link below if you would like to submit an offer to purchase the collection or a portion of the collection.

Monday, March 02, 2009

Social Networks in Byzantine EgyptGiovanni Roberto RuffiniFairfield University, ConnecticutHardback (ISBN-13: 9780521895378)Also available in eBook formatFor price and ordering options, inspection copy requests, and reading lists please select:Europe, Middle East and Africa | Americas | Asia | Australia and New ZealandSocial network analysis maps relationships and transactions between people and groups. This is the first book-length application of this method to the ancient world, using the abundant documentary evidence from sixth-century Oxyrhynchos and Aphrodito in Egypt. Professor Ruffini combines a prosopographical survey of both sites with computer analyses of the topographical and social networks in their papyri. He thereby uncovers hierarchical social structures in Oxyrhynchos not present in Aphrodito, and is able for the first time to trace the formation of the famous Apion estate. He can also use quantitative techniques to locate the central players in the Aphrodito social landscape, allowing us to see past the family of Dioskoros to discover the importance of otherwise unknown figures. He argues that the apparent social differences between Oxyrhynchos and Aphrodito in fact represent different levels of geographic scale, both present within the same social model.

• The first book on ancient history to use anthropological and sociological techniques of network analysis • The first full-length study of social structures in Byzantine Egypt • Relies on documentary evidence from ancient papyri generated by small-town peasants and landholders; this produces a book that zooms in on the daily lives of ordinary people much more closely than other books of late Roman history on the market

Contents

Introduction; 1. The centralized elite of Oxyrhynchos; 2. The growth of the Apions; 3. Aphrodito and the strong ties of village society; 4. Quantifying Aphrodito’s social network; Conclusion.

able of ContentsList of IllustrationsAbbreviationsList of Contributors1. Introduction

PART I Situating Literacies2. Writing, Reading, Public and Private "Literacies": Functional Literacy and Democratic Literacy in Greece3. Literacy or Literacies in Ancient Rome?4. Reading, Hearing, and Looking at Ephesos5. The Anecdote: Exploring the Boundaries between Oral and Literate Performance in the Second Sophistic6. Situating Literacy at Rome

PART II Books and Texts7. The Corrupted Boy and the Crowned Poet or the Material Reality and the Symbolic Status of the Literary Book at Rome8. The Impermanent Text in Catullus and Other Roman Poets9. Books and Reading Latin Poetry

PART III Institutions and Communities10. Papyrological Evidence for Book Collections and Libraries in the Roman Empire11. Bookshops in the Literary Culture of Rome12. Literary Literacy in Roman Pompeii: the Case of Virgil's Aeneid13. Constructing Elite Reading Communities in the High Empire

PART IV Bibliographical Essay14. Literacy Studies in Classics: The Last Twenty Years

Series: Groningen-Royal Holloway Studies on the Greek City after the Classical Age, 1

Editors: Alston R., van Nijf O.M.

Year: 2008ISBN: 978-90-429-2037-8Pages: XII-207 p.Price: 75 EURO

Add to cartSummary:In ancient cities, 'daily bread' was a subject of prayer. Grain-harvests could be fickle, but a regular supply was a matter of survival. Food-shortage could lead to social unrest, and long-term solutions required all kinds of political an institutional resources from the authorities. Yet feeding the city was not just a problem. It was an opportunity for the political management of the poor, for competitive display among the elite, and for making money. The essays in this volume present cities and societies which responded to these challenges in very different ways, from the agro-towns in which the citizens commuted to their fields to the market-supplied towns in which an urban proletariat worked for their bread. The articles debate the food supply through all its aspects, economic, demographic, political and institutional to give a new perspective on this debate at the heart of our understandings of ancient society.

Papyrus Collection Available

Papyrus Collection Available (Oxyrhynchus)

What's New in Papyrology wishes to inform the papyrologist community of aunique papyrus collection that is being sold by a US seminary. Its Board ofTrustees is exploring the sale of its papyrus collection, most of which (8of 9) are from the well documented Oxyrhynchus excavation. The mostinteresting piece is a Fourth Century fragment of I Peter 5:6-12. It iswritten in a hand closely resembling that of the famed Codex Sinaiticus.Corporate Development Associates, Inc. (CDA) is assisting the board bycontacting prospective interested parties and has prepared overview of thecollection which you can be secured at this link.

In the coming weeks, CDA plans to email Offer Letter Instructions to thosewho might want to submit an offer to purchase this collection. CDA expectsthe collection to sell in a $ range of low-to-mid six figures. There is apossibility the fragments will sell separately, but they believe thecollection will be worth more together. If you or an organization you areaffiliated with would like the Offer Letter Instructions when CDA issuesthem, please email Jim Hollander at CDA and request to be included on thelist - jimhollander@cda@inc.net.